On Pronouns
She cries nebulas, every sob is something enormous and hazy and vaguely spherical, that’s how I know things aren’t going to be okay, and also she starts apologizing a lot, like “I’m sorry, I’m okay, really,” like it’s all absolute bullshit and we both know it but she feels the need to say it anyway, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and I’m like “No really it’s okay” and then “Why are you apologizing” and then “Damn it I don’t actually care that you’re crying, like do you think this is going to ruin my day because really it isn’t, I mean it’s actually kind of nice when people cry sometimes instead of sighing vaguely and staring over your shoulder” and this is the part where she gets to the pronouns like “he, it, they,” I don’t know if it’s always the same problem or what, I don’t know if she’s hiding this one really enormous secret or maybe it’s always something so stupid she doesn’t want to admit it because she never gets past he, it, they, and when it’s all over she says she’s fine and dries her eyes and says “thanks for listening thanks for talking to me” and I say “no problem any time I’m not bothered at all no not even remotely bothered,” and I don’t know but nights like these I always end up sobbing into my pillow with some infuriatingly vague pronoun ringing in my head, bell-like, tragic, he, it, they. Every problem of hers I try to swallow, it always burns and bubbles on the way up. All of these pronouns are stuck in my throat.
